1990: Bhutan - Personal felicitations by UN Secretary General Peres de Quellar and the UNDP chief William Draper III for the outstanding work in connection with the ‘Rural Housing Demonstration Project’, a Royal Command of the 4th King of Bhutan.

2009: Nomination for the Prize ‘ Equal opportunities Flanders’ (Provincial Government of East Flanders), for his series of ‘Designing in the Dark’ workshops, re-connecting designers with visually impaired end-users.

2011: Belgium – Laureate of the Senior Cera Award, for having socially innovated the discipline of architecture through his academic teaching, research work and social service.

Research topics:

Universal Design, Intercultural ‘enabling’ Disability Studies, Architectural Anthropology, Material Culture, Multi-Sensorial and Haptic-geared architectural research and research by design. Co-Founder ‘Damian Research Fonds, KU Leuven (October 10th, 2014) together with vice rector prof. Katlijn Malfliet and prof. Patrick Devlieger. Founder of the international programme, Sint-Lucas campus Ghent. Co-ordinator Joint Research School USO-Built: User-oriented Built environments, member IRU3: Built-in Quality-of-Life (BQL). Member of International Jury European Schindler Access for All Award Competition. Member of the International Jury of the EU-Access City Award (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016). Member of the KU Leuven interfacultary workforce ‘Diversity and Universal Design for Learning’ under the chair of vice rector Prof. Katlijn Malfliet.

Three career-best publications within the field of Universal Design research

Dujardin, M. (2010). End-user driven architectural studies in Belgium through student participation in real multi-stakeholder projects and the development of a training programme for user-experts. In Kose, S. (Ed.), IAUD-conference for Universal Design in Hamamatsu, Japan. 3rd International Conference for Universal Design. Hamamatsu, Japan, 30 October - 3 November 2010 (art.nr. 0-153). Hamamatsu, Japan: International Association for Universal Design (IAUD). This event and publication served as the first true and peer review and welcoming of the author’s fourfold UD Teaching methodology at the international research scene.

Dujardin, M. (2011). Learning from practice: Post-Evaluation (POE) as a UD teaching tool at Sint-Lucas Architecture, Belgium. In Bichard, J. (Ed.), Myerson, J. (Ed.), Include 2011 proceedings. Include 2011. London, UK, 18-20 April 2011 (art.nr. 461).London, UK: Helen Hamlyn Center for Design, Royal College of Art. The more than 100 POE’s of so-called best practice architecture in Belgium provide the students to look more critical at architecture in general and their own design attitude and outputs in particular

To comply with the EU-Resolution ResAp 2001 on the introduction of the Universal Design concept into the curricula of architectural schools in Europe, our Faculty of Architecture (formerly the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, Brussels-Ghent), has put this human centred design paradigm on the agenda of the Flemisch schools of architecture in order to develop it as a mainstream curriculum component. One of the personal achievements was 1. The production of the ‘Universal Design’ movie, commissioned by the Flemish Government, Equal Opportunities, 2. publication of the Digital UD Toolkit and 3. The development of the author’s personal UD teaching strategy (a. Awareness Training base on bibliographical studies, b. Subjective experiences of the built environment (DID-DMSC); 3. Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE), and 4. UD Research by Design).

EU-Intensive Programme ‘Designing in the Dark’ (DID) and “Designing the Multi-sensorial City” (DMSC) series of international workshops: Dujardin – Ooms - Julien

Besides making Universal Design topic a compulsory curriculum teaching module of the International Master of Architecture, campus Ghent, the author’s series of international workshops “Designing in the Dark” (former EU-IP) and the “Designing the Multi-sensorial City” workshops stand for the interdisciplinary character of the research strategy. All initiatives not only are conceived as multi-stakeholder programmes (academics, professionals, policy makers, students, enabling and dis-enabling end-users) but reach out for a more holistic approach to the issue of disability. Promoter EU-IP (Intensive Programme ‘Designing in the Dark) (2005-2008) in co-operation with 6 European partner universities (Polytechnic University Warsaw, Ecole d’Architecture Lille, TU-Eindhoven, Chalmers University Göteborg, Roma Tre University, Strathclyde University Glasgow). Follow-up workshops sponsored by the City of Ghent.

Based on a 14-year intensive co-operation with a diversity of user-experts with multiple disorders, the author is currently developing an digital “empathy guide”, an inspirational UD-design grammar linking a variety of ‘disability profiles’ (physical, intellectual, auditory, visual,...disorders) to the ‘ chain of accessibility’ (to reach, to enter, to use and to understand a built environment). This UD-design tool, developed in close-co-operation with arch. Marie-Andrée Avraam, accessibility officer of the City of Ghent (main sponsor) will be formatted as a computer application (interactive website) and is meant to be used by designers throughout the process of designing. While designing, the empathy guide facilitates the designer to place him/herself into the position of one or more persons with multiple impairments. Initially developed from the perspective of architecture, the close co-operation with cultural anthropologist Patrick Devlieger, ensured the interdisciplinary set up of the project. It honours the intimate relationship between the discipline of Architecture and Cultural Anthropology from the shared entry point of ‘enabling’ disability studies. To carry out the exposure of inclusive design to both students, professional designers, accessibility experts and the general public through the UD-APP, the Flemish Expertise centre, Accessibility (Vlaams Expertise Centrum Toegankelijkheid - ENTERvzw) agreed to provide the technical backstopping based on their extensive published UD-manuals.